Dead Ringer
by Tsume Yuki
Summary: Preforming a ritual to make himself the Master of Death; Voldemort ends up with an unconscious girl instead. The female is killed and the corpse disposed of. If only the girl had done the decent thing and stayed dead. When Harry Potter finds himself waking up to a far too female body in a time too early to be his own, he knows Voldemort is somehow behind this mess. MoD and FemHarry
1. Prologue

**Dead Ringer**

**Prologue  
><strong>_Cyrus Ashburne's on Life as a Death Eater_

Nervously wringing his hands out, Cyrus Ashburne stood before the Dark Lord Voldemort, throat bobbing nervously as he swallowed. The serpent visage was fixed upon him, red eyes narrowed and Cyrus forced himself to focus upon his verbal report. Or rather, how he was going phrase what was sure to be an unpleasant piece of information. Unpleasant for him that was.

It'd only been two days since he'd joined the ranks of the feared Death Eaters, two days since he'd followed Pure-blood Lucius Malfoy, nervous and almost shaking, into the group, receiving his Dark Mark. As a half-blood, and the newest one to boot, he'd pretty much been everyone's whipping boy so far.

He did not like it.

He joined to take out the muggle scum, to get rid of their influence on society. They weren't strong enough, his muggle father having left the second he found out his wife was a witch. He'd track the man down one day and get his own back, and this, he'd felt, was the way to go about it.

Death didn't make him that squeamish.

So when he'd been called into his Lord's private ritual room and ordered to dispose of the body, Cyrus hadn't paid too much attention to the dead female other than her age -perhaps no older than ten or eleven at a push- and the fact that she would probably have grown up to be quite the beauty. You know, if she hadn't crossed paths with the Dark Lord that was.

He'd been slightly more interested when he learnt from another Dearth Eater that the girl had changed physically, no doubt due to the blood ritual that their Lord had been tampering with. One of the Death Eaters had even gone so far as to state their Lord might be learning how to steal life energy, and had started out on the girl.

Cyrus didn't want to think too much on the subject, so he'd apperated into the middle of nowhere and left the body for the local police to find in the morning. He'd washed his hands of the job, ready to move onto something far more worthy.

So it was typical that their Lord had suddenly decided he needed to study the body again. He'd been dispatched to retrieve it, only, well...

"What do you mean the body is gone?" The sharp hiss of his Lord's voice cut through the air and Cyrus visibly trembled, clenching his fists beneath his sleeves in hopes it would steady his wobbling legs. It didn't.

"It was g-gone, a set of foot-prints led to the nearby village pub. I-I asked around, found out a girl matching the body's description had stumbled in, a-asking where she was and then vanished not long after... T-the K-knight bus had been summoned to the village not ten minutes ago." Cyrus didn't need to look up to know that his Lord was vibrating with restrained fury.

But when he did raise his eyes, he got a good look at the yew wand that took his life in a flash of green light.

.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, seated within a purple bus that whizzed along roads at speeds that could only come to being through magic, Harry James Potter looked down at the distinctively female body and instantly knew he could lay all the blame of this upon Voldemort.

Some how, some way, this was all Voldemort's fault.

* * *

><p><strong>Wanted to write some FemHarry and Regulus. So, yeah. This is an Alternative dimmension, and yes, instead of becoming the Master of Death in this ritual, Voldemort accidentally summoned him. Or, well, her as it is now. <strong>

**Anyway, thoughts?**

**Tsume**  
><strong>xxx<strong>


	2. The Professional Hiccup

**Dead Ringer**

**Chapter 1  
><strong>_The Professional Hiccup_

Drumming her fingers atop the hard metal of the desk before her, Harriet 'Harry' Peverell grimaced. The fifteen year old, who'd once been known as Harry James Potter and had most certainly been male, grimaced at her current location.

It'd been just under five years since dear old Tom had summoned her up. Or rather, that's as much as she'd been able to tell so far. Waking up face down in a ditch with her forehead throbbing in pain wasn't exactly a great start in all honesty. Her limbs had shook with exhaustion, but she'd still managed to haul herself up and out of the mud and make her way to the nearest village. From there, she'd called upon the Elder Wand after finding her usual Holly one missing, and summoned up the Knight bus to take her far, far away from there.

Looking back on it, that'd been a very good idea, because apparently Voldemort had put a nice little bounty on her head to see her returned to his lair. And wasn't that a kicker? Voldemort was running rampant in this world. For it most certainly was not her world. She'd spent the time between then and now on the run from Voldemort, then from both Dumbledore and the Ministry once they'd clocked the fact a minor was running around the country using magic when she wasn't yet of age.

It'd taken her years to come up with some idea of what was going on. She wasn't Hermione, who would probably have figured out exactly what was going on and more importantly, how to fix it, within the first month of her arrival. Harry didn't have that kind of brain power though, so instead she'd been employing her Slytherin cunning, subtly collecting information from newspapers, the gossip of the wizard and witches of this time, and of course, ripping whatever information she could from the minds of the Death Eaters that came after her.

She'd had several questions, the most obvious one's being; what was she doing here? And why the hell was she in a girl's body, yeah, that was a good question.

It wasn't until she'd snuck several pieces of information from a young Lucius' mind that she half figured out what was going on. Apparently, this Voldemort had unfortunately heard about the whole 'Master of Death' thing, and instead of collecting the Hallows, had attempted to force Death to submit to him via ritual work. Harry had laughed herself silly at the idea, even if the fact he'd killed a young muggle-born girl to do so made her stomach flip.

However, Death already had a master, it wasn't about to accept another one. Harry was pretty sure the being had plucked her up and stuffed her into this universe to sort Voldemort out. Even so, the fact she didn't belong here had been a problem. And Death's solution had been to take the body of the girl Voldemort had killed and stuff Harry's soul into it.

Of course, that hadn't been enough, he'd taken the DNA of the closest human and given her a new identity through that. She was fifty percent that poor muggle-born girl, and fifty percent dark lord. In the mirror, she looked one-hundred percent Tom Riddle, only female. Harry had purposely kept her hair as wild as possible upon realizing that.

"Do you why you are here Miss Peverell?"

Oh didn't Death have a sense of humour? It wasn't bad enough the being had set her up to take out the Voldemort that'd dared to attempt enslaving him, but he'd gone on to give her that name. That's what the Hogwart's letter for this body had been addressed to after all.

.

Grimacing, Harry ran a hand through her hair and refused to look at the Auror before her. She was in a huge amount of trouble; one of the law enforcement officials had caught her with a stunner just after she'd finished sending a raid of Death Eaters on their way. She'd been tired, bleeding from a cut on her arm and not seen the flash of spell-fire till her limbs were already locking up. They'd since tried to take the Elder Wand from her, but now that she had all three Hallows, they refused to be parted from her side. Not even death stopped that, evident from the fact Voldemort had tried to kill her when she'd not even spent ten minutes in her new body.

New body.

Frown deepening at that thought, she -having to refer to herself as female had been difficult to come to terms with- stopped tapping her fingernails against the desk and instead glared at the Auror. His partner, the one who'd introduced himself as Auror Netherwood, had taken to pointing his wand at her seeing as she couldn't be disarmed, regardless of the fact she'd stashed the Hallows back in the wand holster on her wrist. Auror Fairbrass was still glaring down at her, dark eyes narrowed and Harry let a long sigh.

"Because you hit me with a stunner?"

"You've been caught red handed breaking the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery! You have the biggest list of offensives ever recorded! It's a miracle you haven't exposed us all."

Frowning, Harry leaned back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest and flicking her wrist, Elder Wand snapping out to rest in her palms. Ignoring Netherwood and his suddenly tense posture, Harry rolled her wand across the table towards Fairbrass, raising a dark brow as she did so.

"Snap my wand then."

There was a crack as Fairbrass did just that, his dark eyes still focused upon her own -which was the only thing she'd kept of her past body, green eyes- though he didn't look happy about it. He probably suspected what would happen, but he still seemed shocked when the Elder Wand materialized once again in her hand, whole and unbroken.

Fairbrass threw his hands up in defeat as she tucked her wand away again, leaping to his feet and shaking his head.

"This is too much for me. Dumbledore's been alerted and we've recalled Moody in from his investigation. They'll know what to do."

Harry snorted.

* * *

><p>Albus Dumbledore ran a weary hand up his face, rubbing his forefinger and thumb into the tender skin of his temples as he made his way through the Ministry.<p>

It'd been nearly four years since resistance against Death Eater attacks had appeared. Resistance that was not orchestrated by him that was. Dumbledore had been somewhat startled to see it, but more than happy to sit back and watch it happen. He'd had a lot on his plate at that time, between running the Order, Hogwarts and several other titles, he'd not been paying too much attention.

A problem had popped up in Hogwarts mainly the fact one potential student couldn't be reached.

An important sounding student; Dumbledore had taken note of the letter addressed to one 'Harriet Peverell', simply because of that last name. He'd been chasing the girl all over the country, having no idea how she knew to move around and how to bounce tracking charms and post owls back off herself.

It wasn't until he'd turned up to stop a Death Eater raid that he'd realized that the professional hiccup in Voldemort's current plans, and the Hogwarts truant were the same person.

He'd only gotten a glimpse of a small figure with messy black hair, but it'd been enough. It'd taken him a few days to accept an eleven year old child was effectively stopping Death Eater attacks on her lonesome, and he'd been on her trail ever since. Both he and the Ministry, determined to real her in.

And at last they'd finally found her. Better late than never.

Pushing open the door to the interrogation room, Dumbledore paused in his footsteps, frozen in place by the green eyes that stared back at him from a far too familiar face. It was feminine, but he knew that face, it haunted his nightmares along with it's snake-like counterpart. He'd been watching it in memories recently, looking desperately for clues. The eyes were wrong, and there were small flaws, like the lips being a bit thinner, the sharp angles a bit softer, the lightning bolt scar upon the brow, but other than that, it was a perfect copy.

"Albus." Moody was sat up to the table, blue eye whirling around whilst he natural eye remained pinned upon the girl. Dumbledore forced himself to focus, to remember this girl didn't know him, didn't hate him like Tom Riddle did. Like her father did.

"Miss Peverell I presume?"

The girl smiled slightly, a bitter glint in her eyes as she nodded.

"I guess you're going to cart me off to Hogwarts then?"

"It is require by law that all magical children not of age attend and acquire their OWLs, yes."

Harriet Peverell grimaced, running a hand through her wild hair with a sigh.

"Wonderful."

* * *

><p>"We have a late addition joining the school for her fifth year."<p>

Head snapping up to look at the headmaster, Regulus Arcturus Black narrowed his grey eyes, focused on Dumbledore's standing form. It'd been two week since the start of school, there'd never been a late entry to the school before. Unless...

He paused, recalling a conversation between his parent two years prior, in which Orion had been describing how Dumbledore had been unable to tract down a girl meant to be coming to Hogwarts and the School Board of Governors were getting irritated about the truant running wild in the country. Perhaps they'd finally caught up with their little run-away then? It had to have happened within the past twenty four hours, they'd been dying to get the girl to school ever since she'd not shown up in her first year. How far behind she'd be... Regulus smirked at the idea.

Poor poor girl.

Beside him, his year-mate Rabastan Lestrange had lifted his head curiously from where he'd been bent over a plate of food, one eyebrow raised. Dumbledore was going on about how they'd be sorting the girl now, and he watched as the door to the side of the hall was pushed open.

A girl, evidentially his age from the fact she'd be joining his year, stepped out, paying no attention to the stares she was gaining. She was admittedly rather pretty, with startlingly green eyes. But the thick black hair that hung to her elbows was untamed, as if it hadn't seen a brush for months of end, regardless of the fact it'd clearly just been washed. She looked wild, as if she'd been forced into the school uniform in an attempt to cultivate her. It hadn't really worked, she didn't look like she belonged here at all.

"May I introduce Harriet Peverell?" Peverell?

That was a rather interesting name. Wizarding definitely, he'd heard of it before but couldn't quite pin down where.

The girl dropped on top of the stool and the sorting hat was placed upon her head, the Great Hall falling silent, as with every student that'd ever been sorted. He was, admittedly, interested. The girl could go anywhere. She was cunning enough to avoid the Ministry and Dumbledore for several years, and brave enough to not tun up to Hogwarts and keep using magic while she was on the run.

Of course, with such a last name, one he couldn't quite remember and thus, not really important in the grand scheme of things, the snake house would probably be hard to handle.

So it was with caution he clapped as the girl was told she was to join Slytherin. He shared a look with Rabastan.

At least it looked like things wouldn't get boring soon.

* * *

><p><strong>So, yeah. Death is lazy and went for the nearest available body, and Harry has had five years to come to terms with the fact he is now female. There'll be more back-story later on I guess.<strong>

**Thank you for all the wonderful reviews,**

**Tsume**  
><strong>xxx<strong>


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